Tottenham Hotspur have come out near the top of a new transfer survey that assesses how good negotiations have been for new signings over the years.
The CIES Football Observatory's statistical model has been used to compare players’ values prior to their transfer and the fees actually paid for them in Europe's five major leagues since 2012. That also allowed CIES to highlight how certain clubs have driven inflation up, with Manchester United heading the rankings. United's total investment for their 33 fee paying transfers during the period was 1.594bn euros (£1.397bn), which was 238m euros (£208m) greater than the estimated value of players concerned.
Juventus, PSG, Aston Villa, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Arsenal, Rennes and Everton come in just behind United for spending more than players' values and the report says that their numbers "confirm their key role in driving up inflation on the transfer market". Deals concluded by triggering buy-out or option-to-buy clauses were not included in the sample analysed.
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At the other end of the scale, only three Premier League teams figure among the 36 clubs across the five leagues that invested less money than expected to conclude the fee-paying deals assessed. They were Wolverhampton Wanderers, Spurs and Brighton and the report suggests that those clubs were better at negotiating for those transfers they concluded.
For Tottenham, their numbers showed that on 41 transfers they have spent 951m euros since 2012 (£833.9m), the sixth highest sum in the Premier League, but the total value at the time of purchase of the players they bought was 957m euros (£839.1m). That suggests Spurs saved £5.2m in negotiations, the second best figure in the Premier League behind only Wolves.
The flipside when studying the report is that Spurs had 41 fee paying transfers analysed compared to 33 at Arsenal, United and Liverpool, 36 at Chelsea and 38 at Manchester City. That Tottenham's sample cost far less than those five clubs above them, all of which bar Arsenal (980m euros) spent more than 1bn euros, despite them signing more players shows the difference in figures being splashed out by the north London outfit.
It could be suggested that other clubs paid the money to get the players they wanted while Tottenham not only negotiated better deals for the ones they wanted, but did also walk away from some potential signings who could have improved them because they did not want to pay over the odds.
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